Michigan, Ground Zero For Sustainability, Struggling To Develop Wind Power

In the late 1800's Michigan's forests were clearcut, Paul Bunyan style, and the bellwether Woodland Elk, an exemplary Mega-Fauna whose range was nearly centered on Michigan (pictured), was extirpated. Another species native to Michigan, MegaTruckis flacidus (sp) is living on borrowed time, the official jobless rate is hovering around 7%; and, they are struggling to scale up wind power because of an antiquated transmission grid. All this, while surrounded by water resources that are the envy of half the population of the US and many arid nations.

Developers are proposing more than 3,000 megawatts of wind power in Michigan, an amount - at more than 1,000 times larger than existing capacity - that could push the state's lagging transmission capacity to center stage

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But state officials do not have a clear picture on how readily the state's electricity transmission infrastructure could accommodate the added load - a proposed 2,500 megawatts in the Lower Peninsula and 520 in the UP - from new wind-generating sources...

This is a common problem.

The Washington, D.C.-based AWEA, which held a conference last week in Detroit, says transmission is the largest hurdle to expanding wind capacity in the U.S. Much of the 5,200 megawatts of wind energy installed in 2007 was in remote rural areas that are poorly served by transmission lines.

When does a sense of urgency kick in? Must the Federal government create a TVA for wind power transmission improvements, or do we wait on the "free market" to deliver us from coal? It is perplexing. Not to pick on just one state, but...